Blasts by Qaeda Unit Are Deadliest Attack in Algiers in Years

People run past the scene of a suicide car bomb near the prime minister's headquarters in central Algiers April 11, 2007. Credit
Louafi Larbi/Reuters

PARIS, April 11 — Two bombings in Algeria, one aimed at the main government building in the country’s capital, killed at least 23 people on Wednesday in a sharp escalation of the violence linked to Al Qaeda that has spread across North Africa.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North Africa’s most active terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks. It was the deadliest attack in the capital in more than a decade, and followed warnings by officials in Europe and the United States that Algeria was becoming a center for terrorism that could threaten Europe and North America.

“This is a crime, a cowardly act,” said Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, speaking on national radio shortly after the explosion tore open the front of the building housing his office. “It can only be described as cowardice and betrayal at a time when the Algerian people are asking for national reconciliation.”

The bombing of the government building killed at least 12 people and wounded 118, according to APS, the country’s official new agency. The agency reported that 11 others were killed and 44 wounded in a second attack, at a police station on the road to the country’s international airport, east of the capital, Algiers.

The terrorist group, originally called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, was formed in 1998 as an offshoot of an Islamist group that had been fighting the government in a decade-long civil war.

Its numbers had been badly eroded in recent years by two government offers of amnesty and a subsequent manhunt by the Algerian security forces. But the core of the group, hundreds strong, has steadfastly rejected reconciliation and last year aligned itself with Al Qaeda. Its aim is to overthrow the government and install an Islamic theocracy there and throughout North Africa.

Al Qaeda’ s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, publicly anointed the group as Al Qaeda’s representative in North Africa on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and in January the group changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a region that includes Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

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Firemen evacuate a victim of a suicide car bomb which exploded near the prime minister's headquarters today in central Algiers. Credit
Louafi Larbi/Reuters

The group has apparently undergone a revival since then, drawing new members from across North Africa, terrorism experts in Europe and North Africa say. Governments on both sides of the Mediterranean fear that the group is coalescing into a regional terror movement.

“The concern is that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb want their reach to be larger than it is now,” said Rear Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of Special Operations Command Europe, speaking last month at his headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. “They are already somewhat regional and growing.”

United States Special Operations forces are helping train troops in North Africa to combat the threat.

In December and January, Tunisian security forces killed 12 Islamic extremists and captured 15 after uncovering a cell whose leaders had come from Algeria.

The Moroccan authorities are hunting as many as 10 would-be suicide bombers after three men blew themselves up on Tuesday. A fourth man wearing explosives was killed before he could detonate them. One policeman was killed in the blasts.

The men were being sought in connection with an explosion on March 11 in an Internet cafe in Casablanca in which another Islamic extremist blew himself up.

Many terrorism experts say they suspect that those men are also linked to the Algerian group.

Attacks in Algeria have steadily increased since December, when a convoy of foreign construction workers was bombed outside the capital. In February, the group claimed responsibility for detonating seven powerful car bombs outside police stations in six towns east of Algiers, killing six people. Those coordinated attacks alarmed officials because they involved more sophisticated remote detonation devices.

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Credit
The New York Times

Last month, a convoy of oil workers was attacked in Ain Defla Province, west of Algiers, killing one Russian and three Ukrainians. Subsequent clashes with the Algerian Army killed nine soldiers and four fighters from Al Qaeda, Algerian officials said.

The bombings on Wednesday confirmed fears that the violence would again enter the capital, which became a battleground during the horrific civil war that began in 1992 after the Algerian military canceled elections because an Islamist party was poised to win.

“Although we know there are still terrorists outside of Algiers, we didn’t believe they were capable of making this kind of attack so near the government headquarters,” said Mahmoud Belhimeur, a senior editor of El Khabar, Algeria’s largest-circulation Arabic newspaper.

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The attacks began at around 10:45 a.m., when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle through the gate at the building housing the prime minister’s office. The bomb tore apart the front of the six-story building, shattered windows in nearby ministries and set several cars in the vicinity on fire. Witnesses reported seeing rescue teams remove at least seven badly burned bodies from the rubble.

“It was shocking, incredible,” said Leila Benhamoud, who was at the scene shortly after the blasts. “Even in the park nearby, they found a burned body in the grass.”

A second blast destroyed a police station in Bab Ezzouar, an eastern suburb. Al Jazeera’s bureau in Rabat, Morocco, reported that it had received a telephone call from a spokesman for Al Qaeda claiming responsibility for both attacks.

The caller said that the blasts were carried out by three Qaeda members driving trucks filled with explosives, and that the bombers had focused on three sites, including the government headquarters, in Algiers, the Interpol office in Algiers and a building housing the special police forces in Bab Ezzouar, Al Jazeera said.

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The explosion at the prime ministers offices blew a hole in the six-story building and showered rubble. Credit
Fayez Nureldine/AFP -- Getty Images

However, there was no report of an attack at Interpol’s Algiers offices.

“We won’t rest until every inch of Islamic land is liberated from foreign forces,” the caller said in a recording of the phone call broadcast on Al Jazeera and carried on its Web site. He also called for the release of “oppressed prisoners in Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and elsewhere.”

Pictures of the three men said to have carried out Wednesday’s attacks were posted on an Islamist Web site, according to the SITE Institute, a United States group that monitors militants’ messages.

In the photos, each man was shown wearing a green turban with automatic rifles propped on the wall on each side of him. The men were identified as Muadh bin Jabal, Al Zubair Abu Sajda and Abu Dajjana. Mr. Sajda and Mr. bin Jabal were wearing suicide vests.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is divided into nine commands, each in charge of a geographic zone. Attacks in Zone II, which covers Algiers, are believed to be carried out under the command of Sadouai Abdelhamid, known as Yahia Abu el- Haithem, who was sentenced in absentia last month to 20 years in jail.

The attacks follow a period of intensifying military action against the group in which one of its top leaders, Soheib Abu Abdul Rahman, was recently reported to have been killed.

That the bombing occurred on the 11th of the month brings to mind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid, and some terrorism experts suggested that the attacks added to the accumulating symbolism of that day of the month.

“I would say that numerology plays a large part,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm. “But the bigger issue is that you have May elections in both Algeria and Paris.”

French counterterrorism officials are particularly worried about Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb because of the difficulty in monitoring traffic between Algeria, a former colony, and France. Last year, the group singled out France as a target.

“We cannot stop the flow of people coming and going,” Christophe Chaboud, France’s antiterrorism coordinator, said last month. “The idea is to single out potentially dangerous individuals, which means intense investigation. They are difficult to identify through the huge flow.”

Said Chitour contributed reporting from Algiers.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: 2 Bombs Set by Unit of Al Qaeda Kill 23 in Algeria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe